- 4 -

I started up Skype last night. It was a simple enough gesture mechanically speaking, but I spent an hour picking clothes, having a shower, shaving and doing my hair before I finally brought myself to sit down and get to dialing.

When i finally sat down, for the first time since I could remember, there wasn't a single person in my address book available to talk.

My first thought was that the network was down, so I called the test number and was rewarded with the cheery confirmation that nobody i know wanted to talk. This in itself is pretty odd, as I've reviewed a pile of best-selling phones both mobile and fixed line that have an "always on" feature fully integrated with Skype.

I clicked on a few offline avatars, including my sister's, to see if people were just hiding their status, but they really were offline.

I decided to go for the next best and recorded a quick video message to my sister then to a couple of random friends. It was only moments after clicking "send" that I started checking for replies. Each moment that went by I felt my heart quicken.

How long has it actually been since I spoke with someone. Easily a few months. But how long has it been since I received an email from an actual person, not a mailing list, rss feed, out of office etc.

A long time. A quick check through my inbox gave me a date over four weeks ago. I must be pretty detached from my fellow humans to have let that much time slip by. Now that I'm desperate I can't raise a family member, let alone a (long ignored) friend. I'll have some making up to do once people are talking to me.

- 2 -

I'm pretty sure it has been nearly three thousand days since I stepped foot out of this building. In all that time, for only ten of those days I was without electricity, with a maximum of only two days in a row. Its amazing how efficient even the utility companies can be in the face of competition.

There were also six days, three each time, when I had no water, in fact no plumbing of any kind.

Whilst electricity provides my real lifeline to the world - communication - it was the plumbing that nearly, but not quite, led me to emerge into the world. A toilet that doesn't flush and no shower nearly shattered the shell around my little world. After the second crisis I had a tank installed on my balcony and another in the rooftop garden.

The numbers mean something, because I am coming up to three thousand reviews too, all written and paid for. There's a chance I can write my three thousandth review on my three thousandth day. It won't have meaning for anyone else, but maybe I should treat it with some kind of reverence. It's not like I do birthdays anymore, and if I did, who could I invite? I wore out people's patience years ago, making excuses for every invite. Eventually invites stopped arriving.